Hero’s welcome for Marchionne — savior of Fiat and Chrysler

Hero’s welcome for Marchionne — savior of Fiat and Chrysler
Google gets in game of Internet age storytelling
Kanak-kanak cedera dalam kebakaran Kpg Pulo Hilir
Warmer Pacific worsened cyclone risk for E. Asia
Police arrest two over gang-rape of Danish tourist in Delhi
Yahoo chief operating officer out

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 07:05 PM PST

Brash Fiat chief Sergio Marchionne was welcomed as a hero at the Detroit Auto Show this week after completing the takeover of US automaker Chrysler.

On January 1, Marchionne sealed the deal to buy the 41.5 percent of the number three US automaker that Fiat did not already hold, after months of tough negotiations with the seller, the union's retirement health fund.

He made no effort to hide his happiness over the deal in Detroit, calling it "the high point of 2014 for me."

"It had to get done; it's like going to the dentist," he said.

The deal marked the 62-year-old's first decade as the chief executive of the Italian group, and four and a half years as CEO of Chrysler. Fiat took a stake in the American automaker in 2009 as it emerged from bankruptcy reorganization.

Since then, Chrysler has rebuilt its business, selling 498,000 cars last year and generating profits that have since become crucial for Fiat, struggling in its own depressed core markets.

Marchionne's efforts have been labeled "la rivoluzione di Marchionne" — the Marchionne Revolution — since he first rescued Fiat from implosion in the 2000s.

"He has done an extraordinary job. He took a company most people thought was going to die and he turned it around very quickly… and now he's pulled off this purchase," said IHS industry analyst Tom Libby.

Karl Brauer, of Kelley Blue Book of auto industry specialists, said Marchionne smartly took advantage of Chrysler's impending bankruptcy to lay down the framework for a new global automaker.

"And by executing on the financial and product challenges involved in such a merger, he's been able to turn that vision into a reality, even in the face of dwindling sales in Fiat's home market."

Marchionne is hardly the typical auto industry chieftain, with years of background in a carmaker's engineering and sales divisions.

Born in Italy, his family moved to Canada when he was 14, where he went to university and became an accountant.

With his rimless glasses, greying hair and ever-present dark pullover, and his regular trips outside conference buildings to feed a heavy smoking habit, Marchionne still looks like an accountant although he has now spent more than two decades running industrial firms.

But, as with his reputation as a tough negotiator and powerful poker player, he misses little and keeps sharp control over all aspects of the Fiat group, from design to advertising to finances.

He makes a specialty out of hunting down and eliminating excess costs.

"Waste is unethical," he likes to say.

Marchionne himself says he sleeps little and lives in the air, jetting from one Fiat or Chrysler operation to another.

The job demands it. Even if Chrysler is now humming, Fiat itself continues to bleed losses, a hefty challenge for the binational, bilingual CEO.

The father of two is in an odd partnership at Fiat with chairman John Elkann, the always formally dressed, discreet representative of the Agnelli family that controls the company.

Elkann knows he needs Marchionne, who is 24 years his senior.

"We have a deal for at least three years," he told reporters in Detroit, assuring them Marchionne is not going anywhere.

"We built this together."-AFP

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Google gets in game of Internet age storytelling

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 06:04 PM PST

The Google lab behind augmented reality game "Ingress" is teaming with HarperCollins Publishers and top author James Frey for an Internet age adventure in storytelling.

Niantic Labs announced Wednesday that it will create a mobile augmented reality game as part of an "Endgame" multimedia project meshing together digital novellas, YouTube videos, social media, search results and a trilogy of young adult novels.

Twentieth Century Fox has picked up the film rights.

The project centers on a trilogy by authors James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton. The first book, "Endgame: The Calling," will be published on October 7, according to HarperCollins.

"This is a spectacular story that embodies the future of publishing — great content, interactivity and a multimedia experience," HarperCollins chief executive Brian Murray said in a statement.

Clues and riddles for solving interactive puzzles will be sprinkled throughout each Endgame book. Gold will be on display in a bulletproof glass case, the key to which can be found by solving the puzzle in the first book in the series, according to HarperCollins.

Claiming of the prize will be streamed live at Google-owned online video venue YouTube.

Endgame will be released simultaneously around the world in more than 30 languages, according to HarperCollins.

"We're doing something really amazing, really new, something readers are going to love," Frey said.

"The whole project is a dream come true, and as far as I'm concerned, October can't come soon enough."

Frey is writing the script for the first film, which will be produced by Temple Hill's Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen, producers behind the Twilight Saga series of films.

"Endgame is an innovative omni-platform endeavor, and we at 20th Century Fox are thrilled and committed to work with HarperCollins, and Google Niantic Labs to bring James Frey's groundbreaking franchise to audiences around the world," said 20th Century Fox production president Emma Watts.

Niantic Labs is developing a location-based, augmented reality game that marries video games and the physical world. The game is expected to launch for play on Android and Apple-powered mobile devices late this year.

Six Endgame novellas will be available exclusively at the Google Play store as e-books.

"James has a great vision for telling stories in an integrated way across books, film, social media and mobile games," said Niantic Labs vice president of product John Hanke.

"We are delighted to bring our technology and expertise to bear on a project that is helping to define the future of entertainment."-AFP

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Kanak-kanak cedera dalam kebakaran Kpg Pulo Hilir

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 06:04 PM PST

by Jeremy Lanson. Posted on January 16, 2014, Thursday

KUCHING: Tiga rumah hangus di Kampung Pulo Hilir dalam kebakaran pagi tadi menyebabkan seorang kanak-kanak cedera ringan.

Insiden pada jam 8.20 pagi itu berjaya dipadamkan oleh anggota bomba dari balai Petra Jaya, Padungan dan Tabuan Jaya pada jam 9.15 pagi.

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Warmer Pacific worsened cyclone risk for E. Asia

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 05:08 PM PST

China, Korea and Japan have been placed in the firing line of powerful tropical cyclones by a warming of water in the western Pacific, according to a three-decade study published on Thursday.

Researchers led by Chang-Hoi Ho from Seoul National University in South Korean looked at five sets of background data for tropical cyclones that occurred in the northwest Pacific between 1977 and 2010.

During this time, the surface waters of the western Pacific were much warmer than the central and eastern parts of the ocean, they found.

This temperature difference, also called a gradient, went hand-in-hand with changes to a strong wind system over the Pacific called the Walker circulation.

The result was that cyclones tended to follow the line of the East Asian coast, from the South China Sea upwards, before making landfall in China, Japan and Korea — by which time they had reached their maximum punch.

The change also meant that more cyclones generated in the northern part of the South China Sea.

As a result, storms headed for southern China, Vietnam or Taiwan began life too close to land to build up to maximum speed by the time they reached the coast.

More work is needed to confirm whether the temperature gradient is a result of man-induced global warming or a natural variation of a kind that lasts decades.

"If the past changes of large-scale environments are evidence, or a result of, global warming, it can be assumed that in the future more catastrophic tropical cyclones will strike East Asia than ever before," said Ho.

The investigation appears in Environmental Research Letters, a journal published Britain's Institute of Physics.-AFP

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Police arrest two over gang-rape of Danish tourist in Delhi

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 04:59 PM PST

New Delhi: Police on Wednesday arrested two homeless men over the alleged gang-rape of a Danish tourist who lost her way in New Delhi — the latest high-profile case to shine a spotlight on women's safety in India.

The incident involving the 51-year-old comes just weeks after the country marked the first anniversary of the death of a student who was gang-raped on a moving bus in the capital in an attack that sent shockwaves across the nation.

The Danish tourist approached the suspects for directions early on Tuesday evening while trying to return to her hotel in the bustling Paharganj district, reportedly after visiting a city museum.

Up to six "youngsters" dragged her to a secluded part of a garden near the New Delhi railway station where they robbed and assaulted her at knife-point, police said.

She was travelling alone and had arrived in the capital on Monday after visiting the Taj Mahal in the northern city of Agra, staff at her hotel said.

"Two person(s) have been arrested in connection with rape case with Danish national," read a statement from the police late on Wednesday.

Despite tougher laws and efforts to change attitudes to women in India's deeply patriarchal society, the number of reported sex crimes in the world's second most populous country continues to rise.

The alleged attack in an area popular with tourists in the heart of the city comes less than two weeks after a Polish woman was allegedly drugged and raped by a taxi driver while travelling with her two-year-old daughter to New Delhi.

Police searching for 'vagabonds'

Police said both arrested men, one of whom was a 25-year-old migrant from nearby Uttar Pradesh, were homeless and sleeping rough at New Delhi railway station.

They were both found to be carrying possessions belonging to the victim, including an iPod music player and a spectacles case.

A senior investigating policeman told AFP Wednesday on condition of anonymity that they were searching for between four and six men who appeared to be "vagabonds".

The victim, who was described as "traumatised" by police, gave a detailed statement in the presence of the Danish ambassador and is returning home.

A Danish foreign ministry spokesman said she "will be offered support and care when she comes home to Denmark" while declining to give any other details.

The crime scene was a secluded area shrouded by trees near a statue, inside the grounds of the Railway Officers Club on State Entry Road.

A police forensic team visited on Wednesday morning and police are in possession of the clothes the victim was wearing at the time of the attack, police told AFP.

Kuldeep Singh, a receptionist at the victim's hotel, said the woman had appeared calm when she returned at about 8:30 pm (1500 GMT) but then confided in a fellow traveller.

"She first came to me at the reception desk and told me that she needed 200 rupees to give to the auto driver as she had been robbed," Singh said.

Female tourists afraid

Female tourists in Paharganj said they were aware of past cases and the new incident had rung alarm bells.

"I felt very unsafe with walking the streets and seeing what you see and everybody staring at you, but you can't not travel to India because of it," said Jessica Orpwood, a 21-year-old student backpacker from New Zealand.

Protests over sexual violence in the past year have prompted India's parliament to toughen laws for rapists and other offenders, while other judicial and police reforms have encouraged women to report attacks.

But daily accounts of brutal assaults continue to be reported in the country's newspapers.

A schoolgirl was raped by eight men in the eastern city of Ranchi this week while they held her male friend, the Hindustan Times reported on Wednesday.

The paper also reported the alleged rape of a German teenager on a train bound for the southern city of Chennai last week. The report said police had a man in custody.

A judge last month sentenced three Nepalese men to 20 years in jail for the gang-rape of a US tourist in June and six men were sentenced to life in prison last July for the gang-rape and robbery of a Swiss female cyclist.-AFP

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Yahoo chief operating officer out

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 04:09 PM PST

Yahoo chief operating officer Henrique de Castro is walking away with a stock award of $20 million as the company struggles to boost revenues, regulatory filings showed.

The California-based Internet firm's second-in-command will be out effective Thursday, having served in the post about 15 month's since being hand-picked by chief executive Marissa Mayer shortly after she took charge.

Yahoo did not reveal the reason for the departure, but speculation was strong that the company's advertising revenues were not improving quickly enough.

As part of her mission to revive the company, Mayer has made a slew of acquisitions, including blogging platform Tumblr. She has also revamped Yahoo pages and its free email service.

Mayer took over as Yahoo chief in July 2012, and her plan to revitalize the company includes being at the center of people's Internet habits, especially on mobile devices.

Despite many investments, Yahoo last year lost its Number 2 position in the US digital ad market to social networking titan Facebook, according to industry-tracker eMarketer.

Yahoo's share of global digital ad revenue slid about a half percent to 2.87 percent last year, while Facebook and Google saw their shares rise, eMarketer reported.

De Castro was given a million-dollar "make good" cash bonus when he was hired from Google in October of 2012, and his annual base pay was $600,000, a letter filed with US regulators said.

He also secured an award of $20 million worth of "make-good" stock shares, which are his to keep if Yahoo is letting him go without cause, according to a termination clause in his hiring letter.-AFP

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